Merlin G. Pope, Jr., Pope’s late co-founder, pursued his doctorate at Yale University while simultaneously commuting from New Haven, CT to Cincinnati, OH to work as an external consultant at Procter & Gamble—monumental achievements for a Black man faced with numerous race-related barriers during that time.

Companies, like P&G, were doing what was required of them by the recently passed Affirmative Action laws passed to help combat racial discrimination—and later gender discrimination—in the workplace, recruiting and hiring Black employees. But they were unsure of how to make it work once black engineers had been hired.

Several visionary Division Leaders at P&G realized their managers and employees would benefit from racial awareness training.

In 1976, Merlin co-founded Behavioral Science Applications, Inc. and shortly thereafter, he created the first business case for diversity and inclusion, which examined racial/ethnic diversity and the average annual productivity increase. His work at P&G contributed to his doctoral dissertation research at Yale, which compared how long it took newly hired White vs Black engineers to be “earning their keep plus $1.00.”

Patricia also worked in the engineering division of P&G in Cincinnati. Her curiosity about how things work created new opportunities that led to her appointment to a newly created position in the Organization Development Department of the Engineering Division. Her focus was creating development programs for women and increasing the representation of Black women in the Division.

In 1977, Patricia and Merlin began seeing each other outside of work, personally, while also professionally developing diversity & equity training content and tools, as well as creating marketing materials and the business systems that would be necessary to ‘scale the consulting business’ beyond one client.

By the late 1970s, other Fortune 500 companies outside of Cincinnati began hearing about Pope Consulting’s unique approach to Affirmative Action that focused on leveraging diversity to increase productivity.

Patricia left P&G in 1979 to join Merlin founding the new business.

Patricia and Merlin married in 1980.

In 1983, they reincorporated as Pope & Associates, Inc.

With Merlin and Patricia’s guidance, many organizations began to see the link between having a workforce that reflected their diverse customer base and innovation, productivity, and growth.

When Merlin G. Pope, Jr. passed away in 1998 Patricia took over as CEO and Chief Creative Officer.

In 2018, Merlin and Patricia’s first son, Merlin G. Pope III, joined the company as Vice President and eventually became President.

Second son, Adam Pope joined in 2020 as project manager.

To date, more than 1 million people across the globe have benefited from Merlin & Patricia’s unique bottom-line approach to diversity, inclusion, and culture change.